Robert Peel quotes:

Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.

The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

On the Wednesday evening - that is, the day I saw her Majesty on this particular point - I had the opportunity of conferring with all those whom I proposed to submit to her Majesty as Ministers.

The Reform Bill has destroyed the ancient conduits and strainers, and brings Public Opinion to act upon the government with the rapid, turbulent, and uncertain violence of a flood!

But after this natural burst of indignation, no man of sense, courage, or prudence will waste his time or his strength in retrospective reproaches or repinings.

Agitation is the marshalling of the conscience of a nation to mold its laws.

Can there be a more lamentable picture than that of a Chancellor of the Exchequer seated on an empty chest by a pool of bottomless deficiency fishing for a budget?

Much is said about English severity, but not a word about Irish provocation.

No minister ever stood, or could stand, against public opinion.

However much I have been blamed for not showing more deferences to a great party, and for not acting more steadily on party principles, all I have to regret is that I showed so much.

I have read all that has been written by the gravest authorities on political economy on the subject of rent, wages, taxes, tithes.

In every village there will arise a miscreant to establish the most grinding tyranny by calling himself the people.

Of all the vulgar arts of government, that of solving every difficulty that might arise by thrusting the hand into the public purse is the most illusory and contemptible.

I never knew a man escape failures, in either mind or body, who worked seven days in a week.

My belief is, from all that I have seen of the French people and their Government, that they are much more likely to presume upon our weakness than to take offence at our strength.

My object, having a surplus to deal with, is to consider how I can deal with it to the greatest advantage to the consumer- how, without inflicting any injury on Canada, I can secure the most substantial benefit to this country, to the manufacturing, to the commercial, and to the agricultural interests...The real way in which we can benefit the working and manufacturing classes is, unquestionably, by removing the burden that presses on the springs of manufactures and commerce.

The distinction of being without an honour is becoming a rare and valuable one and should not become extinct.

The police are the public and the public are the police

The real truth is, the number of convicts is too overwhelming for the means of proper and effectual punishment. I despair of any remedy but that which I wish I could hope for - a great reduction in the amount of crime.

There seem to me to be very few facts, at least ascertainable facts, in politics.